


Open Your Eyes (And Realize We Are One)

by denorios



Series: Open Your Eyes (And Realize We Are One) [1]
Category: Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-11
Updated: 2010-07-11
Packaged: 2017-10-10 12:16:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/99643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/denorios/pseuds/denorios
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Epic Chris angst. Takes place at the end of 'Obsession' - just imagine the last scene with Mary, the letter and Vin and Chris on the boardwalk never happens, and we'll go from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Open Your Eyes (And Realize We Are One)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks be to my wonderful awesome betas slavelabour and farad - I must have done something good in a previous life to deserve you.

Chris lies in bed for three weeks recovering from Handsome Jack's bullet and Vin doesn't come by once. Every footfall makes his heart stutter with hope, every rattle of the doorknob, every muffled concerned voice, but it's never Vin. Even when he asks, even when he drops his pride and all but begs Buck to get him Vin still doesn't come. Buck just tightens his lips and shakes his head.

He wakes that first day with Vin's name on his lips and when Buck says quietly, 'he ain't here', at first Chris can't tell which hurts more: Vin's absence or the bullet wound. He turns his head away and closes his eyes against the pain. When he awakes the shadows have moved and darkened and Vin is still not there.

He stops asking after a while but he can't stop himself from lifting his head from the pillow whenever the door opens, can't prevent the hot leap of anticipation in his eyes that dies as soon as Buck or Nathan or JD walks through. He sees the glances they exchange when they think he's not looking, full of pity and concern, but there's a question there too, and anger. There's something they're not telling him, something about Vin.

Once, he hears Vin's voice or thinks he does. He's levering himself up and towards the window when Nathan walks in, immediately rushing to his side and pressing him back to the bed. "Is Vin here?" Chris demands, weakly resisting Nathan's determined ministrations, but Nathan just shakes his head and says nothing. His face is blank but his eyes are hard.

Laid up in bed with nothing to do but think, Chris almost feels like a different man. The anger is still there but it's no longer the roiling seething rage that comes and goes in waves, leaving him panting and breathless in its wake. It's muted now, subdued, receding into the background of his memory. He feels as though it's slowly seeping out of his body with the pain and the fever, mopped up and discarded with the poultices and bandages Nathan painstakingly replaces day after day.

He wants Vin. He wants Vin so badly he doesn't have the energy to think of anything else. He wants, _needs_ to apologize. When he thinks of his actions, the words he flung at Vin so cruelly, the dull look in Vin's eyes, the disappointment, the betrayal, it hurts so badly he can only bow his head and groan. The noise brings Nathan to his side, hands hovering over the thick bandages, and Chris can't find the words to tell him it's not physical, this pain. It's nothing Nathan can cure with a salve and a damp cloth.

He needs to tell Vin. In Ella he'd seen his life as it had been before Sarah, before Adam, before he became the man shaped by their loss. With Ella he could close his eyes and imagine none of it had ever been – no marriage, no love, no child, no fire, no loss. He'd asked Nathan once if he was sorry he'd ever had loved ones, simply because he'd lost them. Nathan had smiled. But Chris had been sorry. For a moment, for an endless moment, for the duration of that mad unreal time with Ella, he'd wished his family had never existed.

He needs to tell Vin this, needs to make him understand. 'I see it now', he needs to say. 'I see it now. I was a fool. It's not worth it. Nothing will bring Sarah and Adam back and wishing them away won't change who I've become. I can't go back. I can never go back. I can only go forward and I can't do that without you. I need your help. I need you. If Ella and Sarah were the past you're the future. Come back to me. Come back.'

But Vin isn't there. The chair at his bedside is occupied in turns by Buck, by JD and Josiah, by Ezra and the ever-present Nathan. Chris closes his eyes, sleeps, dreams, open his eyes, and Vin isn't there; has never been there.

***

They bring Vin in early in the morning, so early the dawn light is barely penetrating the shutters of Nathan's room. Chris is half-awake, face turned towards the windows. He had dreamed of Vin and woken half-hard, filled with a drowsy languor that keeps the dull ache from his chest at bay. He had dreamed of Vin's slow sweet smile, his lazy slouch, the warm brilliance of his eyes, the firm grip of his hand. If he keeps his eyes closed and focuses on the small details of the dream he can almost pretend Vin is there next to him, sleeping quietly, chin tucked into his body, the small frown that Chris longs to smooth away with kisses wrinkling the skin between his eyes.

The door swings open suddenly, smashing back against the wall with sudden violent force, and the room is full of people and noise and the hot coppery tang of blood. Chris jerks fully into consciousness, his hand halfway to the gun that isn't at his hip, the dream of Vin abruptly dissolving when confronted with the terrible reality of the sight in front of him, and he can only stare in frozen silence.

Josiah leaves the cluster of bodies and their awful cargo to help Chris from the bed as the others lay Vin on it carefully. Josiah's hands are rough but not entirely ungentle as he helps Chris to his feet and props him against the window ledge. Chris' legs are weak and trembling but it's the sight of Vin that causes it; his own wounds are entirely forgotten.

Chris is shocked at the changes that have taken place in Vin since he last saw him, just two short weeks. His face, what Chris can see of it through the blood and bruises and swelling, is hollow and gaunt, and when Nathan rips at his shirt to get at the bullet wound in his chest Chris can count every rib. There are bruises mottling almost every inch of Vin's chest and stomach and in more than one place the clear imprint of a boot.

"Vin," he whispers, and in another place and time he would have been ashamed of the way his voice cracks. But not here, not now. He doesn't even hear his own words, doesn't hear Nathan's frantic shouts or the clink of spurs and the scuff of boot heels as Ezra and JD back away from the bed to give Nathan space to work. The whole world has narrowed down to the sound of Vin's thin ragged breaths and the sight of his pale slack face.

There's blood on the floor, blood on the bed, blood on Nathan's hands, on Buck's stricken face, on Ezra's usually so-pristine shirt, so much blood. How can one man lose so much blood and yet draw breath? Chris' eye is drawn by Vin's bandanna, dyed red with blood, lying sodden and forgotten on the floor. 'It's his favorite', he wants to say. 'Don't leave it there. He'll want it.'

"What happened?" he asks around the strangling lump in his throat, eyes flitting from JD kneeling beside the bed, mopping up blood with cloths that are rapidly becoming soaked, to Nathan bending over Vin with forceps in hand, to Ezra and Buck standing by the door, hushed and tense, to Josiah murmuring prayers softly to himself. "What happened?"

Buck turns on him in fury, hot words bubbling at his lips, but the sight of Chris' white, strained face checks him. He stops, sighs, scrubs his fingers through his hair and says after a moment, "He went after Ella by himself. We tried to stop him but he slipped out and we couldn't track him. You know what he's..." Buck chokes on his words and falls silent.

Chris looks back to the still figure on the bed, the silent counterpoint to all the noise and motion that swirls around him. Vin's dark hair is matted with blood and the contrast to his dream is enough to make Chris cough and heave. He had dreamed of those curls, the way the wind lifted and snarled them as they rode out side-by-side, the damp softness at the nape of Vin's neck, the clean smell as Chris pressed his face into Vin's neck as they moved together. He had dreamed of so many things, so many moments that have never been, only to awake to this living nightmare.

"Vin," he groans, turning away and groping sightlessly at the frame of the window, legs wobbling unsteadily beneath him. "Vin..."

Buck is beside him, warm hand cupping his elbow, keeping him upright and stable as Ezra shoves a chair quickly beneath him. Chris sinks into it gratefully, hiding his face in his hands and shuddering, his breath coming in fast panting sobs.

He wishes he could stop his ears as easily as he can hide his eyes – the harsh rasping sound of Vin's breath, the wet slop of the sodden cloths on the floor, the sucking sound of Nathan's forceps digging into Vin's flesh to find the bullet, the soft murmur of Josiah's voice as he offers up prayers to a God Chris hasn't spoken to for so long, all batter at his ears and rend at his heart until he wants to scream.

There's a dull clink suddenly and a sigh of relief and he looks up to see Nathan straighten, holding a dish with a lump of dark bloody metal in it. "Got it," he says wearily and his eyes meet Chris' across the room. There's no anger in Nathan's eyes now, no recrimination or unspoken accusations, only a deep and abiding sympathy, and it's only then that Chris realizes he's crying.

***

Looking back, Chris is never entirely sure of how many days he spends at Vin's bedside, how many nights he sleeps on a pallet on the floor, lulled to sleep by the soft rhythmic breaths that mean Vin is still alive, Vin is still holding on, he's not lost.

He can only remember a nightmarish haze of fever and sweat, of blood and pus, and endless hours brushing away flies drawn by the nauseatingly sweet smell of the suppurating wound in Vin's chest. He feels as though his life has been suspended in time: everything that has come before is finally dead and gone and finished; everything that is yet to come hinges on the man lying before him, and until Vin opens his eyes and smiles once again all that exists are these moments, the endless heart-stopping pauses between one breath and another.

Memories come back to him in incomplete snatches: leaning over Vin to brush the sweat-damp hair back from his forehead; looking up to find night falling soft and warm and unnoticed around him; falling asleep with his forehead pressed against their joined hands; the feel of a blanket settling over his shoulders and a gentle hand passing over his hair as Nathan sits by his side.

The only image that remains clear and strong, so vivid and sharp that he knows in years to come he will be able to take it out and examine it and find it just as fresh as ever, is the moment Vin's eyes flicker open and find his.

It's the change in Vin's breathing that first alerts Chris, a sudden hitch and stifled gasp as Vin wakes to a world of hot swirling darkness and pain. Under his hand Vin's fingers twitch, and he groans softly, such a small, feeble sound Chris would never have heard it had he not been leaning over the bed, fingers trailing gently down Vin's cheek.

"Hey, pard," he whispers, voice thick and full of emotion. "Welcome back."

Vin's dry lips curve in the smallest of smiles at the sound of Chris' voice, and his eyelids flutter as he struggles to open his eyes. Chris doesn't realize he's holding his breath until he sees the smallest crack of bright blue looking up at him, and he suddenly draws in a ragged gulp of air. "Vin," he sighs, the smile that spreads across his face so broad it makes the long-unused muscles ache. "Hey."

"I didn'..." Vin's lips are so dry he can scarcely make a sound, and Chris reaches for the cup on the floor beside his chair, curls a hand behind Vin's head and helps him sip weakly. Head back on the pillow, Vin turns his head in the tiniest movement as Chris leans in close, thumb brushing slowly over Vin's eyebrow and temple, fingers curving around Vin's skull and tangling in his hair.

"I didn't git her," Vin whispers, his eyes slipping shut. "I'm sorry."

Chris' thumb freezes in its tender motion, and he stares at Vin, struck dumb with a sudden crushing sense of guilt. It never occurred to him that Vin might believe Chris holds him responsible for letting Ella get away, might think that Chris blames him for prolonging the search for his family's murderer - never once did the thought even cross his mind during those long days and pain-filled nights when he had nothing to do but think about his own foolishness and stupid, stubborn pride and Vin's absence.

Of all the things Chris has done in his life, all the things he has cause to regret and wish he could have done differently, nothing has ever clutched at his heart with such agony as the realization of how he has wronged this man, how grievously he has wronged him. He knows he will never deserve his companionship, his friendship, his love, not if he lives to be a hundred and spends every day between now and then on his knees repenting. Vin has never done anything but stand before him with eyes and heart wide open, offering everything, taking nothing, and all Chris has done is turn his back, time and time again.

"Oh no," he chokes, shaking his head blindly. "No, Vin, no. You have nothing to be sorry for. Nothing, you hear me?"

"But...Ella..." Vin's voice is fragile and thready, and his fingers scrabble against Chris' arm, like a child seeking comfort. His eyes flicker open again and Chris falls all over again, transfixed by the sight of them. No-one has ever looked at him the way Vin does; no-one has ever looked at him and _through_ him the way Vin does, as if he sees all of Chris in one look and somehow still finds something to love there.

Chris puts his hand over Vin's and presses hard, feeling the warmth and fragility in that slight touch against his arm. "No," he says again firmly, and there's a note of conviction and certainty in his voice that is unfamiliar to him. He's spent so many years stumbling blindly in the dark, thinking it was revenge and hatred keeping him alive, when all the time it was Vin, unknown and unknowable, moving towards him, waiting for him, calling to him.

"You think I care about her if it means I gotta lose you?" he asks and he's never meant anything more in his life. It brings a depth of emotion to his voice that makes it drop a register, and his voice sounds husky and hoarse in his own ears. "I don't care. Forget her, Vin. I'm trying to. It's not gonna bring Sarah and Adam back and I don't want to lose you too."

He feels the faint brush of Vin's fingers moving against his skin and looks down. Vin's grip against Chris' forearm is weak, and his hand falls away after a few seconds, but Chris knows what Vin means by the gesture. For a moment his heart is so full he can only bow his head and offer up the most heartfelt prayer of his life, that he can be granted the rest of it to put things right with this man. Then he returns Vin's gesture, cradling his forearm gently, and leans in to press his forehead against the other man's.

"You and me," he whispers. "Always, Vin. I swear it."


End file.
